Salvador: Dissecting the anatomy of someone I both love and hate

Photo by Milo Weiler on Unsplash

Let’s start this story from the beginning. Before there were presumptions and call-outs. Before there were accusations and talks of “boundaries,” before there were nights spent out and nights spent in, before there were soccer games and drunken antics, and before there was hurt.

Let’s start this story from the very beginning. When I was just a girl you knew nothing about except the colour her hair and you were just a boy who walked into a room while I happened to be there.

An encounter took place in a colourful living room. Me in jeans on a bean bag, you in a suit on an armchair, both of us choosing stances and clothes that matched our personalities — our contradictions.

I said something you agreed with, you said something I didn't, and back and forth and back and forth until we called it a night. But, regardless of what we didn’t have in common, we sure as hell had the same start. Two people thrust into a world where our skin colour separated us from the people that we were surrounded by, but our class separated us from the people we looked like. We were both foreigners in a world, in a country that was supposed to be our home. And when you are a rare species, when you are used to looking around and finding no one that looks like you and then suddenly you see someone whose reflection matches yours, that bonds you in a beautiful and dangerous way.

You told me your stories and I told you mine. You laughed at my expressions and I laughed at your jokes. And then overnight, something changed. I caught you looking at me - once, twice, three times, and every time I asked you what you were doing, you turned away, embarrassed.

I caught you holding me, putting your arms around me, whispering in my ear, and then suddenly, one night, I looked at you and felt something. Something foreign. Something I never thought I could feel. Something I thought and had been led to believe you were feeling too. But after every glance, every midnight conversation, every sharing of intimacy, the next morning you would look at me as if I were a stranger—one you didn’t hold hands with and tell secrets to and stare at intermittently. I realised that I was both a stranger and a comfort to you, and despite which side I wanted to be on. Ultimately, on every occasion, it would be you that made that decision.

Somewhere in the middle of knowing, somewhere in the middle of being intelligent enough to know better, I told you how I was feeling and you did not respond with warmth, you did not respond with care. You stood up and looked at me, not adoringly as you did at night, not detached as you were in the mornings, but somehow repulsed and terrified. You stood up and left the room. I sat down and cried with the feeling that I’d been pulled into liking, into loving, only to be told that it was all in my head.

I processed this over the days, weeks, and months that followed while you avoided and ignored me. I talked about it daily because I felt like if I kept feelings this strong, this confused, this hurt to myself I was literally going to explode. But the talking didn't help. I thought it strange, I thought it hurtful that the one person you sat closest to the most was suddenly someone to be avoided, someone to be ignored. And things hurt, it hurt.

But suddenly you’re on my side again. I am pulled back in. I am pulled to the surface only to drown another time. Only to drown a second time. Only to drown a third time. And I am told with every pull-up, with every ounce of water that fills my lungs that it is all in my head. I’m the one who fucked things up. I’m the one who needed help enough to know that you meant nothing by those stares, you meant nothing by holding my hand.

It is too much for me. I start throwing up in the mornings. I start throwing up at night. I start to get moments of disassociation, but I have to clarify as sternly as I can that this was not based on your weakness but mine. I was as much a perpetrator as I was the victim, regardless of who pulled on the rope stronger. If only I liked myself more, if only I loved myself more, I would have gotten off the boat. I would have gotten off the rollercoaster that made me physically sick. But I didn't. I chose to stay because as low as the lows were, as fucked up as all of this was (whether it was intentional or not); my brain and my body, in those years, were so starved of affection that I cherished and held onto those rare moments that I got from you as if they were oxygen pulling me back from the brink of death.

Suddenly, again, you drive an hour through towns to see me in the middle of the night. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you send a text telling me you really appreciate me and suddenly, almost weeks later, there is someone else. Someone who is not me. Someone who could never be me. Someone who fits your standards and your mothers, and someone you value enough to not let sink.

And then as soon as I find comfort in someone else, as soon as I find solace in someone who thinks I’m intelligent, who thinks I’m pretty, who thinks it's not all in my head—I am pulled back in. You tell me, suddenly, I wasn't crazy all this time, there is suddenly something you’re feeling. I was always on the boat. I thought I was drowning again, but that was in my head. You were always attempting to pull me back to the surface.

You said you had some decisions to make, which I interpreted as some person to choose out of the two of us—between me and her. And lacking an ounce of self-respect, I waited and waited and waited to see if you would choose, to see if you could possibly see what I saw and what everyone else who ever observed us seemed to see and choose me. Until suddenly, one night, you grabbed my hand, kissed me, and held onto me like I was the glue that was needed to put you back together. In that magical moment, I thought “ this is what it feels like to be chosen first. This is what it feels to not be a second option. This is what it feels like to be loved.”

Only I wasn’t loved. It turns out I wasn’t chosen. It turns out you had plans to meet her the next day. It turns out I was sinking all along and I did something I thought I could never do to get to a boat that was already half gone. You “really, really, really liked me.” You “really, really, really appreciated me,” but none of that could ever be enough.

Let’s start from the end. Let’s start from the unforgivable, which I won’t talk about. From the screaming and crying and weeping and doing it for the most part in silence because there were things I didn't want people to know about you. There was a sophistication, a reputation you needed to uphold and I had no intention of wrecking it regardless of how you had wrecked mine. And so, no one could know what you did or failed to do, the secrets I kept for you, or the secrets I kept because of you, because you needed to be a good person. You needed to stay a good person, both in my eyes, and everyone else's. I owed you that much for making me feel loved for even a second. Regardless of what was done to me, I refused to be the thing that made you sink.

But now I realise you were always sinking. Sinking, sinking, sinking. And the way that I chose to sink myself was by trying to keep you afloat. I was always trying to save you even though I have never been the best swimmer and your weight was far too heavy for me to carry.

Let’s start with the realisations. The therapy, the pills, the reading and re-reading of messages, the over and under-analysing of conversations, and physical touch. The knowledge that what I felt was real. Realer than anything I’ve written on any page. There was love there, at least for me; it was more than a crush, at least for me. But for you, it was an opportunity to gaslight. An opportunity to manipulate. An opportunity to exercise your power. Whether you were aware of any of this or not. Whether your trauma was so deep that it pulled you into doing things against your very nature, mine was deep too. I was deeply scarred and you knew the details of this more than anyone else. You pulled the damage out of me with questions and probes, and I told you about the boyfriend that was so abusive I was sure that if I stayed with him I would have died. I told you about things that happened to me when I was a little girl — another secret I had to keep to protect someone that was bound to me by blood. And you knew all that. You knew all that and more. And still, you chose to destroy instead of help. You chose to deepen the wound instead of mending it. You chose to disappear.

Let me clarify, it was never your responsibility to mend me. It was never your responsibility to pick up a million pieces of glass off the floor when you hadn’t been involved in shattering the vase. It was never your responsibility to try to glue them together, even though I spent nearly every sacred night we had trying to see which piece of yours fit the other, squeezing the glue out of my tube so much that it was nearly empty—just so I could help. Just so I could fix something I dearly loved, and even if you didn’t ask for any of it, the least you could have done is not break my pieces any further. The least you could have done was not scatter them about so wildly that I didn't know which piece of glass was where and questioned if it could ever be found again.

Ours was not a love story, as beautiful as I may sometimes make it sound. It was a very comforting yet strange and messed-up friendship. Though it had all the ingredients to be a fairytale—the feelings, the conflict, the desire—the way you chose to mix the ingredients together and pull the cake out of the oven made the ending burnt, tragic and sour.

You do not get to walk away unscathed. You do not get to affect my ability to trust, to love forever, and walk away unmarked. You do not get to tell me you’ll always have my back and then disappear when I need you the absolute most. When you do something that dark, callous, and unforgivable, it leaves a permanent taint on you. Salvador, you do not get to be the good guy in this story. You do not get to be the good guy ever.

No matter how much anyone knows or says, the fact remains—you fucked up. You fucked me up. And you can walk in your suit with your sophistication. You can wear that mask that only I ever seemed to be able to pull off. But you do not get to leave me in the ruins of a fire that you created.

I won't let you. The world won't let you. Even if the only thing that ever haunts you is yourself, only more aggressively than it did before, know you deserve every ghost. Know you deserve every demon. Know you deserve every hurt.

And most of all, know that you don't deserve me.

I don’t know if you know how hard it was for me to write this — a story that is only half mine. Memory is a selective bitch. There were so many good times, so many laughs. There were so many times when I felt so, so happy being around you that I crossed out all the bad and the awful and eventually, the unforgivable.

It took me weeks and months to process what had happened. Weeks and months to figure out my self-worth. Weeks and months to figure out that I was not and was never the one at fault. And though it should have been anger I felt with every fibre of my being. This is not anger. This was never about anger. This is about hurt.

To dissect you is to dissect the anatomy of someone I both love and hate. There were times I can’t ever forget: on more than one occasion, you held my hair while I threw up and tucked me safely into bed afterwards. You pushed someone down as soon as they became a threat to me. You asked me if I’d eaten at 3 am, brought a burger to me when I said I hadn’t, and then begged me to eat it. We danced around the courtyard with each other clumsily. You only giving in to it because I was so pushy. I laughed at your lack of rhythm and you laughed and complained about my attempts to take the lead. Spending a whole day and night together, which mainly consisted of you staring at me like I was the answer to a question you’d long since forgotten. And me, enamoured, staring right back. This situation is both plausible and implausible. It is both fixable and irreparable. It is love and like and damage and chaos when two very broken people come together. It’s a lot. We’re a lot.

There is no salve or ointment that can make this ending better. No magic balm or quotation. No holy book or sage or blessed water. What I think and have always thought would help, is knowing that it hurt you too. Does it? Does my crying and weeping because of the absolute unforgivable ending, hurt you sometimes? Do the panic attacks and sedatives I took to numb that pain disturb you at all, or do you think I am too sensitive?

Are you immune to any pain you can’t see? Are you immune to any pain you can’t feel? I know with certainty, and not due to callousness nor want for revenge, that I would feel a bit better if I knew that in the deepest and darkest of nights when you try to fall asleep but your brain won’t co-operate, that it was because of me. And that every time you couldn’t face or ignore me wasn’t because you couldn’t stand my presence anymore, but because what you did bothered you—that you cared enough for me to know that hurting me so thoroughly bothered you.

It’s weird, but I need you to keep everything I ever gave you; every note, every memento. I need you, almost for the sake of me, to remember that it happened, to remember that we happened and cherish some part of it so much that you don’t want to ever let go of it, that you don’t want to ever let go of me. ‘Cause regardless of how much it sometimes hurts, when you needed someone—when you needed me—I was there. I was always there.

Let’s start from the very beginning when the only thing I knew about you was that you were a boy and did not recognize that you were someone who would both tenderly and tragically break my heart.

To put the pieces back together, let's start from that.

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Salvador: Dissecting the anatomy of someone I both love and hate was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.